The Drawing Board

McZubbo

Zam — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:34:03 +0000

Hello. Here’s a random sketch. Have at. Don’t learn from it, I’m pretty sure the body has not been constructed properly.

McZubbo

Back to the drawing board

Zam — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:25:20 +0000

See, I was at home, finally getting to try MyPaint with a Wacom Bamboo, and before I noticed, BAM. This thing happened.It seems to be some kind of… noir guy. With a geek nearby. And a full moon. Don’t ask me why. I’m sure that neither the geeky guy nor the noir guy are werewolves. Oh, neither the car is. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s my favourite program on TV. No, I don’t know the title, nor what it’s about. But somehow there’s cows on the screen. If it has cows, it’s my favourite program.

Ok, I posted. Happy?

Greetings from here.

Turnarounds

Mr_H — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:06:51 +0000

I’ve never done a turnaround before, so I sat down and did a couple for characters in my comic strip idea.

They need work….but it’s a start.

Doug Tennapel Demo

Kurt — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:53:10 +0000

Doug Tennapel (the twisted genius behind the design of Earthworm Jim) goes over his comic creation techniques. Lots of ink brush technique here. Explains why he doesn’t like the Cintiq. Very novel brush cleaning technique.

Tablet Foolin’

Kurt — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:17:59 +0000

So…my bro and sis got me a Wacom Bamboo for Christmas and, since Ubuntu worked with it, I decided to mess with it some.
Here’s an early effort, just outlining a photo with Gimp. I won’t paste the original photo, since the tracing is scary enough.

Biker and granny

Zam — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:53:38 +0000

You have a biker. You have a bike. And you have a granny. What more do you need?

No, don’t ask me how I came up with this. I think I started doodling random shapes, the biker came out. The bike came as a consequence. Granny was already there, but she was too hilarious to remove.

(Click the thumbnail for full size)

Biker and granny

Colored Pencils and Computers

Mr_H — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:51:45 +0000

Hey look, a drawing board post!

So, I’m toying with my comic strip idea again and I decided I wanted to see how well it would look colored, by hand. I’m opting to do this by hand because I found myself spending so much time on learning how to draw with the computer, that I wasn’t improving my basic drawing skills at all.

Anyhow, there’s a guy on DeviantArt that draws lil cartoons, and they’re all done in colored pencil. I love the style and asked him how he did it. His response:

There really isn’t much of a secret to it, really. I use ordinary Crayola brand colored pencils, the same kind you can pick up at a grocery store.

My coloring is essentially a very fine cross-hatching. I color with one color in diagonal strokes from left to right, then color again in diagonal strokes from right to left. Depending on the color I want, the colors might be the same or different. For example, the orange of Winslow’s shirt is orange in both directions, but the blue of Ben’s shirt is blue in one direction and sky blue in the other direction.

Then I shade with a darker color, if needed. Further, broader hatches might be added for texture or to show shape.

The picture is darkened on the computer to make the colors richer, and the white parts are colored in a photo editor.

So I’m attempting to mimic that…and I’m not sure I have the style quite right. Below are three picts: One is the unedited, orginal version of my pencil drawing (ignore the blue lines, I’ll work on getting rid of those in the future.) The second is a slightly edited version, where I Went into Gimp and edited the ‘Levels’ options to make it slightly darker. The last picture is the style I’m aiming for (from the other artist).

Obviously I’m not doing it 100% right, but I need some extra ideas on how I can get it a bit closer……any ideas?

Inkscape Tutes

Kurt — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:31:17 +0000

Oh snap, I remembered my password! Score!

Anyhow, dig on some of these Inkscape Tutorials.

First Try with Inkscape

Penny — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:21:23 +0000

Okay, so, I was bummed about not being about to use my tablet in Inkscape – until I read something in one of the Inkscape forums that really summed it up for me:

“You don’t need an eraser for Inkscape…”

So, I plugged in my trackball (keeping my table plugged in too) and started working on Inkscape again…
And here’s my first try.

First Try

Vector Doctor

Zam — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:25:35 +0000

An attempt at recalling an image from memory. See, I was visiting this university hospital, and from afar I saw this young doctor/student/researcher/scientist/whatever whose lab coat was too cool for a real doctor: it looked more like something out of a sci-fi movie.

So I had to try and sketch it once I got home.

Of course, I had to work with vague memories, and I’m not completely sure it was exactly like this, but still, this is the best I could come up with.

Oh, it’s a vector image. Done in inkscape. Layer information should still be there.

Click for link to the original SVG

(Yes, yes, I know. The legs, they are all wrong)

It took a lot of tweaking the original ‘calligraphy’ outline with the ‘tweak/sculpt’ tool, but it was worth it. It was also a nice exercise in gradients.